where men push you out of the way in search

of sausages floating in dead sea water

where employees walk away feigning deafness

to avoid divulging the whereabouts of canned tomatoes

where old ladies slide poorly aligned carts unwittingly

into piles of spinach melting under fluorescent lights

and teenagers mouth songs written when their folks

were their age, before they were looking for freedom

before shelves were spackled with a hundred

kinds of mustard and ketchups from pittsburgh

before cellophane-covered cardboard trays in frozen sections

saved everybody time they didn’t know

needed saving—now they drift out into their parking lots,

chock full of cars without cardboard floors,

shopping carts and westerners’ money, turn on

radios made of binary code as they pull

out, today’s greatest hits played all day long, rules

for contests and ads for fewer commercials.